De Blasio Returns Fire On Cuomo

Governor Cuomo criticized Mayor de Blasio in a thinly disguised but anonymous interview with Ken Lovett last week.

Today, Bill de Blasio returned fire - only unlike Cuomo, he did it without the anonymity jive:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio blasted Gov. Andrew Cuomo in an exclusive interview with NY1’s Errol Louis and took the governor to task for being consumed with “transactional” politics.

“What I found was he engaged in his own sense of strategies, his own political machinations and what we’ve often seen is if someone disagrees with him openly, some kind of revenge or vendetta follows,” de Blasio said of the governor.

The broadsides against Cuomo are the culmination of an increasingly tenuous relationship between the state’s top elected official and the more liberal Democrat who was elected with a wave of progressive support in the city.

...

In the interview, de Blasio knocked Cuomo for working to closely with Republican-led Senate at the expense of the Assembly, which is dominated by Democrats from New York City.

“I don’t believe the Assembly had a real working partner in the governor or the Senate in terms of getting things done for the people of this city and in many cases the people of this state,” de Blasio said.

In one stinging rejoinder during the interview, de Blasio took aim at the Cuomo administration’s habit of conducting background briefings and providing anonymous jabs at the mayor and his policies.

“And I want to hasten to say there was some interesting back and forth last week and some unnamed sources well-placed in the Cuomo administration had a few things to say. I’m here in front of you on record saying what I believe,” he said.

Good for de Blasio to finally come out and call Cuomo what he is - a transactional politician interested only in his own power and career, a vindictive manipulative scumbag and a coward for his pattern of criticizing others anonymously through background interviews and anonymous jabs.

Alas, all this was apparent last year when de Blasio was pushing Working Families Party to support Cuomo.

I understand at the time de Blasio thought he was counting up some chits that could be cashed later with Cuomo - but as many of us pointed out at the time, Cuomo is a liar and his word is worthless.

That immediately became apparent when Cuomo began wrangling out of the promises he made to WFP in exchange for their ballot nod almost immediately after he made the hostage video for them.

Still, nice to see de Blasio come out firing publicly now, and unlike Cuomo, put his name to it.

Cuomo is sufficiently weakened at this point that de Blasio sees no more reason to make believe like his "friend" Cuomo is on the same side as him or his fellow Democrats.

And this will have repercussions not only for de Blasio, who clearly will get increased hostility from Cuomo from now on (get ready to be treated like a teacher, Mr. Mayor!), but for Cuomo too:

.@gracerauh @GloriaPazmino mayor crossing a line that is hard 2 imagine retreating from. will more Dems feel emboldened to attack Cuomo now?

— Azi (@Azi) June 30, 2015

Dunno if Cuomo still harbors delusions about running as a Democrat in a future presidential race, but between the tenant activists and now de Blasio publicly calling him a Republican, that delusion ought to be put to rest for good.